History is beyond us. Events that changed, or should have changed, the world forever. Falling out of collective memoryIf we were to place blame, we might point to a failed education system or a historically large blind spot in the mass media.Another reason why the recent past fades like old photographs may have something to do with old photographs.
The present day leaps out at us from the screens all around us in vivid, high-definition color. We are transfixed by the spectacle of the moment. Perhaps if we could see history in color, or at least see the small but important snippets captured in photographs, we might remember it a little better. This is pure speculation, and no one knows for sure, but the images featured here make it seem that way.
Color photography can be traced back to 1861, when physicist James Clerk Maxwell made experimental prints using color filters, but the process didn’t really catch on until the turn of the century. (Mass-produced color photographs weren’t possible until much later in the 20th century.) One of the early masters of the technique was the Russian chemist and photographer John F. Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskyusing Maxwell’s filter process or other methods This creates the image you see hereIt was made between 1905 and 1915.
There are hundreds of other images, more than 2000 in fact, Library of Congress CollectionThe works have been digitally recreated from color glass negatives and are available for viewing, downloading, and historical research. “I don’t think I’ve ever looked at photographs from the past and felt the subjects come to life in such vivid detail,” said John. Messy Nessie“It’s like it was yesterday, like they blinked at me.”
Clearly, the photographs’ age is evident from the clothing, architecture and other vestiges of the past, as well as the faded textures, but if you imagine this evidence of age as an Instagram filter, you might feel as if you were in the farms, churches, canals, gardens, forests, streets and reception rooms of Imperial Russia during the terrible final years of the Romanov dynasty.
Hundreds of photos In the archive Not in color. The LoC notes that Prokudin-Gorsky “worked on the bulk of his ambitious color documentary project between 1909 and 1915.” While traveling and photographing the countryside, he took just as many black-and-white photographs. Because of our cultural conditioning and the way we currently see the world, we are compelled to interpret black-and-white and sepia prints as more distant and alienating.
Prokudin-Gorsky took his most famous photograph, the color photograph of Leo Tolstoy, in 1908, which we have previously covered here. The photograph earned him an audience with the Tsar, who later gave him “a darkroom in a specially equipped railway carriage” and “two passes allowing him to enter restricted areas,” according to Messy Nessy. After the Revolution, he fled to Paris, where he died in 1944, just one month after the city’s liberation.
The remaining photographs, plates, and negatives were stored in the basement of a Paris apartment until researchers from the Library of Congress found and purchased them in 1948. Color photography, a novelty at the time, now feels mundane. Helpful “for anyone who has ever found it difficult to connect with historical photographs.” Still, you might be wondering, “What will our photographs be like in 100 years?”
I imagine that in 100, or 20, or 30 years, people will be marveling at our archaic, primitive, 2D vision, wandering virtual 3D worlds, and casually conversing with AI-powered holographic historical figures. That technology might make it harder for people of the future to forget us, or easier for them to remember us wrongly.
Please enter The Prokudin-Gorsky Archive of the Library of Congress is here.
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The only color photograph of Tolstoy taken by photography pioneer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky (1908)
Josh Jones A writer and musician based in Durham, North Carolina. Follow
